


For the Love of a Wild Thing

by SouthSideStory



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Child Abuse, East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Freeform, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Reylo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2018-05-27 11:52:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6283420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a moment—just a moment—Rey allows herself to imagine a world outside of Jakku. A far away place, green and beautiful, where she could be free.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Poor Man's Daughter

Rey searches the much picked over wreck of an imperial-class star destroyer, looking through its hollowed out innards for choice pieces. Prizes that might buy portions for herself and her family. The old ship is a graveyard of oxidized junk, already looted many times, and so she climbs high—higher than Lari likes, and her oldest sister calls up, saying, “Be careful!”

Rey has always been the most sure-footed, the strongest and most graceful of her sisters. She isn’t afraid to fall, because she knows with a strange sort of certainty that she won’t. 

She wrenches rusted panelling out of the way and digs through the dead machinery beneath, until she finds what she’s looking for: a crystal resonator. 

“Got it!” Rey shouts, and then she starts the long climb back down. They’re out of rope, and haven’t been able to afford to buy more at Niima Outpost, so there will be no quick descent today. It’s so warm that Rey can barely breathe, a muggy, suffocating heat that makes her sweat all over. By the time she reaches the ground, her shirt is sticking to her back, and her mouth feels drier than the sands outside. 

“Have you got any water left?” Lari asks her. 

“No,” Rey says, surly. 

“What have I told you about saving some for the trip home?” Perra rolls her pretty blue eyes, but she gives Rey her own canteen just the same. 

She takes a shallow sip, careful not to drink the last of her sister’s water, grateful and a little irritated at once. 

They carry their finds back to the three-seated speeder that Lari built four years ago. Her sister can make anything out of the right kind of junk, and even this thrown together vehicle—pieced into purpose out of things abandoned and unwanted—runs better than any other that frequents Niima. Rey knows the ins and outs of every bit of imperial and rebel tech to fall to its destruction on Jakku, but she doesn’t have Lari’s keen, creative eye for construction. 

Once the speeder is loaded, they climb up, Rey into the driver’s seat, and make the trip to the outpost. They had to go a long way to find a wreck worth scavenging, so it takes a good hour to reach Niima. Perra, the fastidious one of the three of them, scrubs their most valuable pieces at the acid baths, and then Lari spearheads the bartering with Unkar Plutt. She knows the worth of the tech better than Perra—who hates scavenging almost as much as she hates the desert—and she’s far more diplomatic than Rey. 

The Blobfish tries to cheat them, offering less than half of what the crystal resonator is worth, but Lari manages to talk him up to a more reasonable price in that calm, firm way she has. They walk away with enough portions to feed their whole family for the night and a small pack of painkillers for Mum.

“It’s not a bad haul,” Perra says. Then she reaches over and ruffles Rey’s trio of buns, no doubt simply to annoy her. 

“Quit that—” Rey hisses. She’s swatting Perra’s hand away when she sees a tall man on the outskirts of Niima, trying to mount their speeder. 

“Hey!” she shouts. “Get your hands off that!”

She sprints to the speeder, which is revving to life, and pulls her quarterstaff as she runs. Rey recognizes the man now as Helok Zar, a skinny scavenger who’s been growing thinner by the day. Desperation probably drove him to thievery, but Rey doesn’t care whether he’s starving or not. Without that speeder, her family doesn’t eat. Without that speeder, her mother could die. 

She knocks him out of the driver’s seat with a vicious blow to the stomach. Zar falls to the ground, cursing and groaning, gripping his middle. Rey hits him again, this time across the back of the head, and he slumps to the sands, clearly dizzy and disoriented, but not unconscious. She should stop, she knows that, but every blow makes her feel stronger, more powerful and less defeated by this desert, less bound to this life. Rey smacks him across the face with the end of her staff, and Zar spits out blood and teeth. She makes to kick him in the belly too, but then she hears, as if from far away, that Lari is shouting and Perra is crying, both begging her to stop. 

She lowers her weapon and looks at Zar, really looks for the first time since she saw him trying to make off with their speeder. He’s skin and bones, really, half-dead already, and now he has a seeping head wound and a broken mouth. 

“Let’s go,” Rey says. “We need to get this medicine to Mum.” 

She takes her seat at the front of the speeder and waits for her sisters to climb up after her. 

“You went too far,” Lari says. 

Perra frowns at Zar, a shaken, bleeding mess on the ground. “Maybe we should help him—”

“You’re too soft-hearted,” Rey says, but her voice trembles a little on the reprimand.

For the whole ride home, it isn’t the sight of Helok Zar, injured and starved, that haunts her, though. It’s that sensation she had when she attacked him, the power and purpose that flooded her veins. It made her feel alive.

.

.

.

Rey’s home is a one-room shack, a hybrid of scavenged pieces. The child of rebel and imperial wreckage, sand-coated, rusting, and lopsided. There are two pallets of musty blankets, and Mum lies on the smaller one, eating pieces of veg-meat and polystarch from Perra’s hand. Every minute or so the quiet of the house is broken by her mother’s coughs. The rough sound of a dying woman’s hacking and the rattling breaths in between. 

Jakku offers little in the way of medical treatment. Painkillers and cough suppressants are the best they can scrounge at Niima Outpost, but even those are costly, and they do little enough to help ease Mum’s suffering. 

A wooden crate serves as the table, and this is where Rey, Lari, and their father sit now. 

“How’s Mum been today?” Rey whispers. She keeps her voice down because her mother doesn’t like it when her daughters ask after her health.

Dad chews his polystarch, thoughtful and quiet as always, before he swallows and says, “No better. No worse.”

Rey nods and turns her attention to her own food. She’s so hungry that she wants to shovel it into her mouth and lick her fingers clean, but her father hates it when she does that. He tells her not to eat like an animal, no matter how famished she is. So Rey forces herself to eat slowly and carefully, hoping that she won’t earn Dad’s anger somehow. 

That hope is short-lived, because Lari says, “A man tried to steal our speeder today.” 

Dad looks up, directly at Rey, and asks, “How did you stop him?”

She knows what’s coming already. The blame, the fury, the punishment. Whenever Rey gets in a fight, no matter how justified, it’s always the same. 

“I beat him,” she says, picking at her polystarch. “Is that what you want to hear?”

Dad scowls. “You know it isn’t.”

“What should I have done? Let a thief steal our speeder?” Rey asks. 

She’s treading dangerous ground now. Her father hates being talked back to, and he’s quick to raise a hand to her when she smarts off. Rey has been smacked in the face more times than she can count for comments less provocative than this, and she can tell from Dad’s hard expression that he’s close to coming around the crate and backhanding her. 

He never hits Lari or Perra. Only Rey. When she was a child, she wondered why this was, what she’d done wrong to deserve the pain. Now she doesn’t bother giving it any consideration; she gave up on understanding her father many years ago. 

“One more fight and I’m taking your quarterstaff,” Dad warns. “Now leave the table.”

“I’m not done eating,” Rey says, and she hates how timid she sounds. How weak. She’s a strong girl, but in the face of her father’s anger she always grows so small. 

“Lari can have the rest of your food.” Her father reaches across the crate and pushes Rey’s plate over to her sister.

“Dad, please don’t do that,” Lari says, and she sounds suddenly panicked. “Rey was just protecting us—”

“Be quiet and do as you’re told,” he says.

Rey leaves the table and goes outside. Their whole ramshackle house shakes when she slams the door behind her, but she doesn’t care. Let the whole damn thing fall down, for all it matters to her. Rey hates this broken home and her hard-handed father. Hates her mother, who rarely speaks up in her defense, and her sisters, who never get punished. 

She sits in the sand with her back pressed against the metal wall of her scavenged house, fighting hunger pains and tears. Her stomach growls fiercely, twists in the very pit of her, and to distract herself from this hurt, Rey starts picking out constellations in the star-speckled sky. Mum taught her how to find them when she was a little girl, before she fell so ill.

For a moment—just a moment—she allows herself to imagine a world outside of Jakku. A far away place, green and beautiful, where she could be free. 

 


	2. Bargaining

She wakes in the middle of the night, startled by the sound of the door opening. Rey grabs her quarterstaff and scrambles to her feet. A man stands in their shack, tall and masked, framed by the star-strewn sky that peeks through the doorway. She strikes at him, but the stranger ignites a lightsaber—a weapon out of legends, one Rey had never thought to see. Its red glow dispels the darkness, a crackling beam of unsteady light, and with a lazy movement he slices her quarterstaff in half.

_I’m going to die_ , she thinks. _We’re all going to die_.

Rey bites back her fear, lets her anger fuel her strength, and makes to attack him again, but he holds out his left hand toward her, and with a simple, controlled flick of his wrist she finds herself frozen. Held in place more surely than if he’d shackled her in place.

The man approaches, saber lowered but still ignited, bathing him in wavering scarlet light. “You’re brave,” he says, “if not very smart.”

His voice is deep and distorted, more mechanical than human, and something about it sends a thrill through her.

Rey struggles against this impossible hold, a violation of every natural law she knows, but it’s useless. He approaches, careful not to graze her with his lightsaber, and tilts his head to the side. Examining her, she thinks. Looking her up and down and taking stock of her value.

Then he touches her cheek with his free hand. Leather gloves separate his skin from hers, but Rey can still feel the warmth of him, the heat of a living person underneath all that black. There’s a surprising gentleness to his caress, a delicate intimacy at odds with the violence he restrains her with.

The man lowers his hand and Rey relaxes as the freedom of movement returns to her body. He turns away from her, as if she is inconsequential now, and stalks toward her father. She sees that Dad and her sisters are all standing, Lari holding Perra in her arms. Mum, who has been bedridden for nearly a year now, remains on her pallet, but she’s sitting up, her eyes wide.

The intruder holds his lightsaber an inch from Dad’s neck and says, “Hello, Levvi.”

Rey frowns, because that isn’t her father’s given name. She expects Dad to correct this man, but instead he says, “So you’ve found me.”

“The Supreme Leader has been looking for you for a long time. You hid yourself well, here on a junkyard of a planet. Who would have thought you’d be reduced to living like this?” He looks around their shack, and even with his face hidden, Rey can see his disdain and disgust.

“What do you want with me?” Dad asks. “I’m not strong in the Force. Surely your master told you that.”

“You may be weak, but your blood is not,” says the stranger. “You know it as well as I do.”

Now he turns back at Rey, strides over to her until there’s not a foot of space separating them. She’s free to move, but for some reason she can’t find the will to take a step back. She hears the barely checked anger in his voice when he speaks. “That’s why he hates you. Why he beats you. You’re stronger than him, more powerful than he could ever hope to be, and he’s sick with jealousy and fear.”

“What are you talking about?” Rey asks. “Who are you?”

“My name is Kylo Ren, and I will be your teacher,” he says. “But the better question is to ask who _you_ are.”

“I know who I am. I’m Rey.”

A laugh infects the air between them, splintered by static and cruelty. “You’re meant for more than this, scavenging starships for your daily bread. Don’t you see that?”

Rey lifts her chin. “I’m not ashamed of myself.”

“You shouldn’t be,” says Kylo. “You’re the granddaughter of the greatest emperor and Sith that this galaxy has ever known: Darth Sidious. And you, like your father’s father, are strong in the Force. Unrefined, untrained, but powerful.”

This would be too outrageous to believe—

Except, she never falls, no matter how high she climbs. The only fights that Rey loses are under her own father’s hands, because she always knows where a blow could fall before it’s struck. And there are times, when she wants something desperately enough, that other people bend to her will to provide it.

Rey only has to glance at her father, at his pale face twisted in anger, to know that it’s true.

“The girl is coming with me,” Kylo says, in a tone that brooks no argument. “But I am not unfair. To compensate you for the loss, you and your family will have enough credits to live well for the rest of your days.”

“No!” Mum shouts, and she drags herself to her feet for the first time in months. She trembles from the effort and begins to cough, an ugly hacking sound that Rey has grown only too familiar with. Perra rushes to their mother’s side and helps support her. “You’re not taking my daughter. I don’t care how much money you throw at us.”

Rey watches Mum struggle to stay standing, listens to her labored breaths. With enough credits, her family could leave Jakku forever. With enough credits, her mother might live a full, healthy life, instead of one stunted by illness and misery.

And there’s a part of Rey that desires to follow this man. To seek the power he swears is within her grasp. She’s had enough of feeling weak, of being helpless. If there’s strength to be had, she wants to seize it.

“It’s all right,” Rey says. “I’ll go.”

She looks to Kylo, and even though his face is shielded by that impassive mask, she can tell he’s pleased. Like a proud teacher whose student has uncovered the correct answer to a difficult problem.

.

.

.

The _Finalizer_ is the grandest ship Rey could have imagined. It’s a resurgent-class star destroyer, a descendant of the imperial wreckage she’s been navigating all her life. Everything aboard it is neat, orderly, and of the highest quality. Whoever runs it must have a most fastidious, unyielding nature.

Kylo takes her to his own quarters, where he plays the gallant. “You’re my guest,” he says, then offers her a glass of red Coruscanti wine. How easily he switches between roles, from intimidating abductor to genial host, she thinks—but she takes the glass just the same. The wine tastes rich and a little bitter. Although she has nothing to compare it to, Rey suspects that the vintage is very fine, if only because it’s in this man’s possession.

His sitting room is as spartan as everything else aboard this ship, no traces of a private touch anywhere. Even living in desperate poverty on Jakku, she had more personal things to her name than this man seems to.

Rey glimpses a perfectly made bed through an open door, and she realizes that she’s peeking into his bedroom.

She looks away, blushing, and sips her wine, careful not to drink too much too fast. She’s still thrown by the revelation of her heritage, and Rey doesn’t quite know what to do with it. How could she possibly be the granddaughter of an emperor? She’s no one, a scavenger from a backwater world. And she can scarcely believe that she allowed herself to be sold for credits, like a slave.

“Where are you taking me?” Rey asks.

“To a planet in the Rakai System called Kobol.” Kylo does not pour a glass of wine for himself. He remains masked, strong arms crossed over his chest. “Aphelion Base is the First Order’s second-largest center, and the Supreme Leader is there at the moment. When you go before him, I suggest that you call upon whatever manners you have, if you value your life. He doesn’t respond well to impertinence.”

Silence falls between them, and Rey reflects on the gravity of her situation. She has signed herself over to the untender tutelage of a cruel stranger, her life is in danger, and she may never see her mother and sisters again. Rey might regret her choice to follow Kylo Ren if she thought for a moment that he’d have left her in peace. With or without her consent, she’s certain he would have taken her from her family.

“Are you afraid?” Kylo asks.

“No, I’m not,” Rey says, and to her surprise, she finds that this is true.

.

.

.

Kobol is a jungle planet, greener than anything she’s ever seen. It’s as hot as Jakku, but humid rather than dry, and Rey is sweating by the time she reaches Aphelion Base. Kylo leads her down to the bottom of the building, and with each level they descend, the air grows colder.

He stops her before they enter Snoke’s chamber and says, “Let me do the talking, unless he addresses you directly. Understood?”

Rey nods, then follows him inside. The Supreme Leader’s great room is large, shadowed, and empty, boasting nothing except for a single stone chair, raised up on a dais like a throne. In it sits a shriveled man, far too frail-looking to house the power he exudes. It rolls off of him in waves, a dark energy that’s almost suffocating to approach.

“This is Sidious’s heir?” Snoke asks.

“Yes, Supreme Leader. She is strong already, despite her lack of training,” Kylo says. “If you approve, I could show her the ways of the Force—”

“You wish to teach her yourself? How endearing,” Snoke says, and something like humor twists his mouth. “I’ll allow it, for the present.”

Kylo nods, the picture of deference. “Thank you, master. I will not disappoint you in this.”

“You had better not,” Snoke warns. “Her presence in the Force rivals that of her grandfather. Such great potential deserves a worthy instructor.”

The Supreme Leader’s smirk widens. His amusement makes Rey nervous, because she doesn’t yet know its source.

“There’s something else,” he says. Snoke laces his fingers together and leans forward in his seat. Whatever he’s about to say to Kylo, it’s obvious that he’s going to relish it. “A rare opportunity has presented itself, a chance to merge two of the greatest bloodlines in the history of our galaxy. You will get a child on this girl by the end of the year.”

Rey shivers, fear seeping under her skin like the cold. Snoke wants her to submit to a stranger, to rut with Kylo and bear his baby like a breeding animal.

She wraps her arms around her middle—around the empty womb that Snoke ordered Kylo to fill—and Rey wants to cry, to scream, to fight.

_This can’t be happening_ , she thinks. _This can’t be real._

Kylo looks up sharply, and even without the luxury of seeing his expression, Rey can tell he’s every bit as panicked as she is. “With all due respect, master, I—I must refuse.”

“You grow too bold for your own good, Kylo Ren,” Snoke says. His voice remains soft, silky, a breath above a whisper. “It is not in your power to refuse me. Perhaps you need a reminder of your place.”

Snoke waves his hand in Kylo’s direction, and he falls to his knees, hands gripping his helmet. He grunts, and when Snoke twists his fingers just so, Kylo screams. The noise is distorted by his mask’s modulator and amplified by the acoustics of this chamber. Echoing around the vast room, cries full of agony and shame. Broken, resounding, endless.

“Stop!” Rey shouts, when she can’t stand it anymore.

Snoke lowers his hand, and Kylo’s screams fade into ragged whimpers.

“I wondered how long you could tolerate that,” Snoke admits, now looking at Rey. “You withstood his pain better than I expected, for a girl who hasn’t been taught anything of the dark side.”

This may be something like a compliment, but it makes Rey sick to her stomach.

He turns back to his apprentice and says, “You can hide nothing from me, and you cannot resist me. You will do as I have commanded. Do you understand?”

Kylo stands on shaking legs, and when he speaks, Rey can tell that he’s crying beneath his mask. “Yes, Supreme Leader,” he says, voice shaking. “I understand.”


	3. Darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to ReyloTrashCompactor and deeppoeticgirl for all the help with this chapter. You ladies are the best betas (and friends!) that a girl could ask for.
> 
> Please note that, although there is NOT any non-con in this story, Rey spends a good part of this chapter worrying that she and Kylo will be forced to have sex. I just want to give a heads up, in case anyone might find that triggering.

Rey stands in a humid transparisteel stall, enjoying the spray of hot water. It’s her first shower in a proper ‘fresher, and she takes her time scrubbing the sand of Jakku from her body. Dispensers on the wall give her the option of a half-dozen skin and hair cleansers, an indulgence she could never have imagined before today. Rey tries to distract herself with the funny-smelling soaps and shampoos, but her thoughts keep circling back to the Supreme Leader’s orders.

Kylo Ren will be coming to her bed tonight. She’s expected to open her legs to a complete stranger, a man whose face she hasn’t even seen. To make a child with him. She hadn’t been afraid to leave home, to give up the dreadful life and difficult family she knew, but this—this frightens her.

Now it’s too late to turn back. She’s trapped in a foreign place ruled by dangerous men, and she has no choice but to endure Snoke’s commands if she wants to live.

Rey turns off the water, steps out of the ‘fresher, and dries herself with a fluffy towel. Some industrious service droid gathered her dirty clothes while she showered and left a white slip in their place. She pulls it over her head and shivers at the sensation of some impossibly fine fabric against her skin. The slip is thin, silken, indecently short. Whoever chose this sad excuse for a nightgown neglected to give her any new underwear—not that she’ll need them for what happens next.

She hurries back to the bedroom and crawls beneath the thick blankets, desperate to cover herself. The mattress is far softer than the pallet she’s always shared with Lari and Perra, and even if she wasn’t waiting on Kylo Ren, Rey wouldn’t have been able to sleep on it. She scoots to the very edge of the bed and hugs a plush pillow to her chest, craving closeness in this empty bed, yet dreading the moment she has to share it.

Being compelled to fuck, when he wants it no more than she does, is the worst sort of violence against both of them. Rey doesn’t hate Kylo for this—that she reserves for Snoke alone—but she can’t help but worry about how this night will go. Will he be gentle or rough? Kind or cruel?

She waits and waits, until she wonders whether he’s coming at all. Rey turns off the lights and burrows beneath the blankets, settling into the warmth of this too-soft bed, but she can’t sleep, can’t dispel the nervous knot twisting in her stomach—

The door to her suite opens, and Rey hears heavy footfalls in the sitting room. He stumbles all the way to the bedroom, stomping with none of his even, purposeful grace from before. Then Kylo just stands there, lurking beside her bed like some great beast in the darkness.

There’s a quiet hiss, followed by the clunk of his helmet hitting the durasteel floor, metal on metal. The whisper of rustling clothes and the twin thumps of boots being discarded. Rey flinches when she feels the mattress dip beneath his weight. She can feel the heat of his broad body drawing close, can smell the sharp stink of alcohol all over him.

“Are you _drunk_?” Rey asks.

“A little,” he says, and she almost jumps at the sound of his naked voice. Unencumbered by the mechanics of that death’s-head mask, but slurred from drinking.

“You reek,” Rey says, and she doesn’t even care that she’s being mean. It’s awful enough that they have to do this without him coming to her bed smelling like a distillery. Part of her rudeness is borne from pure, petty spite, because if he’s allowed to dull the pain of carrying out his master’s commandment, then she should be permitted the same luxury.

“M’sorry,” Kylo mutters. He curls up against her back and nuzzles her shoulder. “I just—I don’t know how to do this.”

“You don’t know how to fuck?” Rey asks, incredulous.

She still hasn’t seen his face—nor any of him at all—but by Kylo’s demeanor and voice she knows he’s a grown man, not a boy.

“I know how it works,” he says shortly, and Rey shivers at the press of his feverish forehead against her shoulder, the damp warmth of his breath tickling her skin.

“But you’ve never done it?” she asks.

He’s silent for a long moment. Then Kylo murmurs, “No. You?”

Rey shakes her head, before she remembers that it’s pitch black and he can’t see her. “No, I haven’t.”

She’s never even been kissed. Potential lovers were few and far between on Jakku, and any boy brave enough to risk her father’s wrath was always more interested in Perra.

“This isn’t what I thought would happen. I dreamed about you, scavenging and starving and sleepless. Your island, I saw it, the green in the middle of all that blue,” Kylo says, babbling now, tripping over his words, speech as ungainly as his drink-clumsy body.

That island was her most precious dream, a silly, private indulgence meant only for her, and Rey hates that she had to share it with this stranger.

“I wanted to take you far away from that place, away from your father, to show you the Force. To be your teacher, not—not _this_. I didn’t think this would be asked of me.” His words fall against the nape of her neck now, muted confessions that warm her skin.

Something in her is excited by his proximity, his heat, the simple novelty of being so close to a man for the first time. But her interest is overshadowed by fear that his subtle touches will give way to brutal handling, whether or not either of them wants it.

“And—” Kylo murmurs the last of it like the most shameful of secrets: “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t want to hurt you either,” Rey says. It seems absurd to admit—that she’s concerned she could harm this man who’s twice her size and steeped in the power of some mysterious Force.

Still, Kylo is only a man, just as she is only a girl—woman?—and they both deserve better than coercion.

Rey is working up the courage to say as much when he whispers, “I can’t do this.”

Kylo turns away from her, and she breathes out, trembling with a relief she couldn’t have imagined before tonight.

The bed is still too plush, and a strange man lies beside her, the threat of his strong body too real to ignore, but somehow she slips into sleep.

Rey wakes to a room brightened by sunlight, as if the dreamless night before had never happened, alone in an empty bed.

.

.

.

A stormtrooper reports to her quarters within the hour and says he’s been assigned to guard her while she’s among the First Order. _Perfect_ , Rey thinks. A minder to report her comings and goings to the Supreme Leader. _Just what I need._

“Come with me. I’m supposed to take you to the medcenter,” he says, and Rey hears something close to sympathy in his staticky voice.

She hurries after him and asks, “What’s your name?”

“FN-2187,” he says.

Rey would think he’s joking if not for his tone of voice—utterly serious and maybe a little ashamed.

“That’s a mouthful,” she says. “Got a nickname?”

She wishes she could see the stormtrooper’s face, because Rey can’t get a read on what he’s thinking when he says, “Sometimes my teammates call me Eighty-Seven.”

“Do you like that?” she asks.

He shrugs. “A number’s a number.”

“Right then. I’m Rey.” She stops, stalling traffic in the middle of a busy hallway, and holds out her hand—because this soldier is going to be watching her every move, and she might as well get on his good side.

FN-2187 shakes her hand, and they continue on to the medcenter. Aphelion Base is huge, industrial, and spotlessly clean, and everything looks the same to Rey. Identical corridors that twist and turn in so many directions that she has no idea how to get back to her quarters.

The medcenter is just as immaculate as the rest of the base, all cold steel and bright lights. FN-2187 waits outside while Rey sits in an exam room, wearing nothing but a long-sleeved medical gown. Somehow she feels naked and swallowed up at once, strangely exposed while she’s smothered in fabric.

Doctor Kezlin is a short, middle-aged woman with brown skin and a gentle smile. She tells Rey that she’s been ordered to give her an exam, to provide her with any medications and vaccinations she may need, and to begin fertility treatments.

“Oh,” Rey says.

Kezlin is kind and careful, but Rey is unnerved by the medical droids, who circle her like dispassionate vultures, scanning her and taking samples of her hair, her skin, her saliva. She doesn’t understand what any of this is for, or why they could possibly need to draw five vials of blood. The droids poke and prod and take pictures of her, and Rey hates it. Having her space invaded this way, being treated like she has no say over her own body.

Kezlin dismisses the droids, then says, “Sorry for the circus. I4 and QT-3 mean well, but they haven’t been programmed to exhibit the best bedside manner.”

Rey rubs at the crook of her elbow. A quick swipe of bacta erased the puncture there, but her skin still feels tender, oversensitive.

She thinks of all the injuries she suffered over the years. Burns, scrapes, welts, and bruises that took days to heal, sometimes weeks. So many hours of pointless pain that could have been foregone entirely if she’d had access to the right medicine.

“Why are you going to so much trouble for me?” she asks.

Unkar Plutt’s primitive painkillers were light-years behind the attention she’s receiving today, and they were still obscenely expensive. These tests must be costing the First Order a fortune.

Kezlin smiles, but she doesn’t look particularly happy when she says, “I’ve been told that your care is my highest priority now.”

_Care_ , Rey thinks. That seems like the wrong word for all of this.

The physical exam is uncomfortable, and she feels vulnerable with her legs spread, her most private parts on display for a doctor she met twenty minutes ago. Rey stares at the wall, the flat expanse of colorless durasteel, and tries not to think about anything.

“Rey, do you need to take a break?” Kezlin asks.

“I’m fine,” she lies.

When it’s over, Kezlin leaves the room so that she can change back into her clothes. But the black uniform that she found in her quarters this morning doesn’t feel like hers, no more than the medical smock she had to wear.

Kezlin gives her a dozen different shots: vitamin boosters to combat malnutrition; bacta to clear up an infection in her lungs and kill the parasites in her intestines; all the common vaccinations that she missed, growing up in a backwards junkheap like Jakku; and the promised injections to bolster her fertility.

“These should help even out your cycle too,” says Kezlin.

Rey hasn’t had her monthly courses in almost a year. Too many mouths to feed, too few portions to go around. (And even when there was enough, her father often sent her to bed hungry anyway. Out of vindictive jealousy, or perhaps just plain meanness.)

Kezlin is logging notes into a computer, gaze focused on the screen before her, when she says, “Fertility treatments won’t do you much good if you’re not having intercourse.”

It’s a simple statement, delivered with bland disinterest, but Rey still stares at the floor, too embarrassed to risk looking at Kezlin. “How did you—could you tell just from examining me?”

“Yes,” she says, and now her voice has taken on a soft, almost motherly tone. “I’m not threatening you, dear, and I won’t tell anyone. But it’s not a secret you can keep for long, if at all.”

Rey understands what Kezlin is trying to say: her independence has been stripped down to nothing, and now the only choice she has left is to settle for the least of the evils around her. Last night was a brief reprieve, not a full pardon, and she can’t expect to escape Snoke’s orders forever.

.

.

.

After night falls and the lights are out, Kylo comes to her again.

He sounds steadier this time, as he takes off his mask and clothes, and when he climbs into bed, Rey only smells soap on his skin. She isn’t sure whether it brings any relief, or simply more fear, that he didn’t resort to drinking tonight.

Kylo lies beside her, still and quiet. His harsh, uneven breathing is the only sound in the hushed darkness of her room, and she can almost feel the anxiety radiating off of him. She thinks he might be as nervous as she is, and that would be comforting if Rey could meet his eyes and know it for sure. But like this, steeped in shadows, she can only see the rough online of a figure by her side. So indistinct that he could be a monster as easily as a man.

Rey waits, and trembles, and swears that she’ll fight him off if she has to. She wore her clothes to bed, so if he tries to strip her, that will buy her some time.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Kylo says. “I’m not going to touch you.”

Rey bites her knuckles, smothering the noise of her sobs. This is a method she developed by the age of eight, because whenever her father caught sight of her tears, he’d say, _Dry it up before I give you something to cry about._

But she’s lost her family and freedom, even autonomy over her own body—and it’s so much, too much, more than she can handle. Maybe more than she can survive.

Rey cries herself out, until her nose is stuffy and the ache of grief throbs behind her swollen eyes. She’s thankful for the darkness, that Kylo can’t see what a mess she is. Bad enough that he heard it.

“You won’t touch me,” Rey says. “What about your master? Won’t he punish you when he finds out?”

She hears the rustle of sheets, feels the the bed shift as Kylo turns away from her. “He already knows. He summoned me this morning.”

“And?” she asks. “He didn’t order you to—”

Rey can’t make herself say it out loud. It doesn’t matter; he must remember Snoke’s commands as well as she does.

Kylo’s voice shakes when he says, “He thinks he doesn’t have to. That if I spend enough nights sleeping by your side, that I’ll lose my patience and make you—that I’ll—”

He stops, takes a deep breath, then goes on. “Snoke would rather I raped you of my own volition. He said that, if I cross that line, it might stamp out the worst of my weaknesses. The compassion I shouldn’t feel.”

“Is he right?” Rey asks, and it’s half a miracle, how calm she manages to sound with her heart caught in her throat. “Would you do it?”

“I don’t want to,” he says, with such certainty, such conviction, that it’s some consolation. “The idea of forcing you to—it repulses me.”

This isn’t quite the answer she was looking for, though. Kylo wears his conflicts like a second skin, and Rey understands, somehow, that he’s found plenty of his own deeds sickening. Disgust didn’t stop him from killing innocents, from torturing his enemies.

He must know precisely what she’s thinking, because Kylo says, “I won’t hurt you. I swear.”

Maybe it makes her a fool, but Rey believes him.


	4. The Scavenger's Castle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to ReyloTrashCompactor and deeppoeticgirl for their help with this chapter!

One week after arriving at Kobol, Kylo says they have to leave again. He won’t tell her where they’re going this time, only that it’s somewhere she can focus on her training, far from the distractions of a military base. Snoke’s orders.

The trip takes the better part of a standard day in hyperspace, and at the end, they come to a strange, small planet that Kylo swears has no name.

“Not even a number?”

“No, nothing,” Kylo says. “I found it myself a few years ago, uninhabited. If it exists in any galactic records, I haven’t uncovered them yet.”

They land on a twilit, winter world. It’s freezing, colder than Rey could’ve imagined any place to be, but beautiful enough to make up for it. Frost cloaks everything that isn’t already blanketed with snow, but trees still grow through it all, blooming with impossible flowers. A modest sun sits low on the horizon, directly beneath a vast crescent moon. Together they loom large against the lilac sky, silver and faded, as close as lovers about to kiss.

“You like what you see?” Kylo asks.

His voice is so close, right behind her. Harsh, deep, somehow full beneath the static, and it takes Rey a moment to find her words. All she can think to say is, “It’s—pretty.”

Kylo’s gloved hand settles on her, broad enough to cover her whole shoulder. So strong that his grasp makes her feel small, vulnerable, in need of further touch but hesitant to invite it. Her breath freezes in her chest, and Rey realizes that her body is scared, even though the rest of her thinks she doesn’t have to be.

His grip gentles, loosens, but doesn’t fall away. Kylo bows lower, closer, until the cold metal of his mask brushes her cheek. She can feel the vibrations of his voice, roughened through the modulator, when he whispers, “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not,” Rey says, just like she did the day she left home. She wasn’t afraid then, as he stole her away like a dark creature from Goazan folktales, and she isn’t afraid now.

.

.

.

Kylo calls it a house, the castle where they’re staying. It’s four stories tall, built all of grey stone and white wood, filled with extravagant things. A dozen droids cook, clean, and handle the castle’s upkeep, but there are no people, neither human nor alien, in sight.

“Are we the only ones here?” Rey asks. “On the whole planet?”

Kylo nods. “It’s just us.”

Rey doesn’t see how it’s any less distracting to train in paradise than a military base, and she knows well enough how isolation breeds intimacy.

“Only the two of us and a bunch of droids?” she asks. “It’s not hard to guess why we’re really here.”

Kylo looks away. He wants to say something cruel, Rey thinks, but instead he takes her hand and pulls her along, roughly and without ceremony, until they reach a staircase to the rooftop. It’s colder there, exposed to the elements on high. Snow flurries seek her bare skin, little pinpricks that feel almost like tickles compared to the brutality of the biting wind. She tastes winter on each breath, watches it steam the air on every exhale.

“This is for you,” Kylo says, gesturing at the whole of the castle, its great walls and glass gardens. All beautiful, and apparently all hers. “The Force revealed you to me, and I had this place built as a gift. A gift I’d planned long before I knew my master’s goals.”

It catches her off guard that, after his manhandling, Kylo’s voice would come out so gentle. Soft, rounded, surprisingly patient. He’s unpredictable, this man she’s quickly coming to know, and his tenderness unsettles her more than if he’d lost his temper.

Rey doesn’t understand it, but she nods, and wishes more than ever that she could go home. Back to the desert, far away from this lovely, unexpected place where she can’t find her footing.

.

.

.

Kylo comes to her bed, unmasked, unclothed. It becomes a ritual, every evening after she’s settling in to sleep, for him to join her between her sheets.

The difference between the Kylo of the day and the Kylo of the night is startling. When the sun is up he wears all black, face and body completely covered. He looks both less and more than human, a monster or a god of sorts. But at night he strips out of his battle-worn gear and climbs into bed, voice naked and skin bare. He’s gentle and utterly, achingly human in the darkness. Like a creature who sheds his skin at sundown, only to reveal a simple man underneath.

Sometimes they share simple touches, other times they share stories. Rey talks about Jakku, the dull, endless days and shockingly cold nights. When she asks about her family he tells her that they’ve been compensated and relocated to a much more civilized planet. A place of Snoke’s choice, where the Supreme Leader can more easily keep them under surveillance, she understands.

Tonight, they talk quietly in the darkness, and he whispers to her about his grandmother: a girl who became a child-queen, a Senator, and the secret wife of a Jedi Knight.

“What happened to her?” Rey asks.

“She died in childbirth,” he says.

Rey turns away from him. She knows that on advanced worlds it’s rare for women to lose their lives in the birthing bed, but she heard of it happening once on Jakku. Another scavenger, Yana, went into labor early. A wiseman from Tuanul Village came to help her, but she died anyway, bled to death giving her baby life.

Whenever the fragile tension between them breaks, and they submit to Snoke’s wishes, could that happen to her? Rey doubts it. A baby this anticipated and valuable would only receive the best of care.

She wonders how long it would take Kylo to get her pregnant. Days, weeks, months? Surely it couldn’t take much coupling with a man like that, young and strong, to leave her with a ripe belly. Rey shivers, clutching her stomach. Flat, too skinny. She’s always been too skinny, thanks to the scarce portions on Jakku, but a baby would round her body. Leave her lush, thick around the middle, and a shade fuller everywhere else. Maybe she could build her own family, a better family than the one she knew. Or she could fail, end up just like her father, and lose her baby to the dark side, to Snoke.

Kylo reaches around and grasps her belly. Rey whimpers, because she knows he heard her thoughts. That he peeked into her mind and eavesdropped on her half-wistful imaginings.

“I don’t—I’m not ready to be a mother,” Rey says. “I’m not. I know we have to do this, that Snoke won’t accept anything less. I was just—”

“Hush. I know, and I’m not ready either.” Kylo nuzzles her hair, his hand sliding over her hip. “You’re so narrow. I do worry that it could hurt you, when it’s time, but you’ll have the best doctors and med-droids in the galaxy. You’ll be fine.”

“I’ll be fine,” Rey echoes, and she will, because she has to be.

.

.

.

Kylo denies her nothing.

Her bathtub is large enough to fit ten people, and there are so many options for soaps that it makes the amenities at Aphelion Base base look like accommodations for a pauper.

It seems Kylo had the kitchen well stocked before her arrival, because their chef-droids fix one delicacy after another. Savory meats served rare with steamed root vegetable, fruit pies and egg pies and nut pies, noodles drowning in rich cream sauces. Rey doesn’t know the names of these dishes unless Kylo volunteers them, but that isn’t needed for her to appreciate their taste. After a life of deprivation, eating only for the sake of survival, it’s half a miracle to eat as much for pleasure as for purpose.

And she has clothes now. Black everyday gear, simple and comfortable, but that’s not all. There are a dozen other outfits that look like variations on the clothes she wore on Jakku, with looping over-tunics, fitted pants, arm wraps, belts, and boots. They’re different enough in form and color not to feel the same, but he clearly paid attention to her taste, and it all fits perfectly.

Kylo gave her a dress as well, a sleek, ivory number made of some flowing material that dips low at the neckline and lower in the back. Rey has heard what white dresses mean in some cultures—but no, Kylo wouldn’t imply that. He probably just wants to see her dressed like a soft, simple creature, a woman feminine and easily-wooed. It’s almost an insult, really, that he provided a wardrobe without consulting her (nevermind that she would have chosen the same things for herself).

So she wears the dress to dinner.

Kylo never eats with her, of course; that would require him to remove that helmet and show her the human face underneath. But he does sit with her, and he looks up sharply when she walks into the dining room, wearing all white with her hair falling around her shoulders.

Rey lingers by the table, feeling suddenly naked in her slip of a dress. Any kind of underwear would show straight through it, so she’s bare underneath, and Kylo must be able to tell.

She sits beside him—not across from him, as is usual during her meals—and he asks, “What are you doing?”

Even through the filter of his mask, Rey can hear the nervousness in Kylo’s voice. She’d forgotten, for a moment, that he’s every bit as inexperienced as she is, and he’s been lying beside her, wanting but patient, for weeks. She wonders if this is it, the moment when his resolve will break. He could bend her over this table, if he wanted to—but only if she wants it too, and if she tells him so.

Kylo doesn’t try to touch her, but Rey can’t get the thought out of her head. She squirms in her seat, barely eats a bite, and drinks two glasses of wine.

“You look beautiful,” he says, half-choked, before he rushes out of the dining room.

She goes to bed still wearing the dress, and when Kylo lays an innocent hand on her shoulder, she turns over, pushes him onto his back, and climbs on top of him. She pulls her dress up around her hips and presses against him. He’s hard and she’s wet and they’re both ready, have been ready all night.

Kylo sits up, and Rey nearly falls backward from the sudden movement, but he catches her. Strong hands hold her close as he kisses her jaw, her throat, gentler than she would have expected. Rey draws as far back as he’ll allow, cups his face between her hands, and runs her fingers over his features. She finds a long face and full lips, a nose that feels perhaps more prominent than usual, and thick hair, so soft that she wants to run her fingers through it forever. But she can only put together the vaguest picture of him in her mind, one that lacks color and specifics.

“I want to see you,” Rey says. “Please let me turn on the light.”

“No,” Kylo whispers, and then he’s kissing her properly, wet, deep, and messy. Rey can’t get enough of it, the taste and heat of him, the unpracticed eagerness of his hands grasping her breasts.

Kylo pulls her dress over her head, and a moment later she hears the murmur of it hitting the floor. Then he rolls her onto her back and she’s caught beneath that heavy body of his, trapped like the most happily snared creature.

“Are you sure?” he asks, all ragged breath between kisses.

Rey whimpers a _yes_ and opens her thighs wider. Grabs him by the small of his strong back and encourages him to fit himself between her legs.

It doesn’t hurt when they come together, the way Perra said it hurt for her the first time. Rey thinks she must be too wet for pain, because all she can feel is pleasure and fullness, as overwhelming as the broad man on top of her. She hangs onto Kylo’s shoulders, shuddering and whimpering as he rocks into her. He’s trying to hold back, to be gentle and make it last, but Rey doesn’t want this slow and tender. If she can’t see his face, she’ll at least see his passion.

So she bites his ear and tells him how good he is, how full she feels. That she needs more, faster, deeper, and she knows he’ll take care of her, give her everything she wants.

Kylo says her name again and again— _Rey, Rey, Rey_ —like it’s a prayer. He takes her harder, higher, until she comes undone around him. Until all she can breathe or hear, feel or taste, is Kylo, and the darkness doesn’t matter anymore.


End file.
